President Taryn tapped her well-manicured fingers on her well-worn mahogany desk. It was a beautiful relic, she thought, enjoying the sound of each of the seven taps against the long-extinct wood. She counted them automatically. She counted everything. The books on each shelf. The steps of each guest. The number of times they got her name wrong. Counting was how she survived boredom.
She kept many important things on her desk, but only two photographs. On her right was Baron Trump, America’s first dictator and her personal hero. On her left was a photo of her wife—the woman behind the woman behind the desk.
For more than twenty years she had sat at this desk—the desk of former kings—and greeted the citizens of Ultima one by one as they aired their petty grievances. She had survived assassination attempts and riots at the capital. She had averted recall elections more than once with executions. Forever, she believed, meant life. And life, for the immortal citizens of Ultima, meant forever. Or at least until the ground opened up and the planet swallowed the remaining population whole. That was honestly as forever as it got in Ultima, the last city, at the end of the world.
Before the first visitor arrived each day, the president took a little time for herself. Or at least that was how she explained it. She told her administrative assistant, Madge, that it was about privacy—about cultivating mystery. She told her head of security, who was also named Madge, that it was about history: the weight of the office, her place in it, the idea that she was probably the last person to ever hold the title. None of that was entirely true.
The truth was simpler. She wasn’t comfortable around people. Not really. She was comfortable around one person. The First Lady. Her wife of more than twenty years. And if you’ve already guessed that her name was Madge, then yes—you’ve been paying attention.
Madge entered from the front office carrying a hot cup of tea and laid it down on one of the blue plastic coasters that sat atop what was believed to be the desk of a former president from the old America. Nixon? Johnson? One of the Trumps? It didn’t matter. They were all gone now, and all but forgotten. Madge kissed the president on the forehead. She was not the first chief of staff to do so, or the first first lady, but she was probably the first head of security to plant one so sweetly on her commander in chief’s forehead and ask, “Are you ready to start the day?”
“Is it bad?” the president asked, not meaning the number of appointments she had, but whether it included many of the familiar faces she had grown to resent. The wackos. The conspiracy theorists. The fan girls and history buffs who could make fifteen minutes feel like fifteen years.
“Yes,” Madge said softly. “I’m not going to sugarcoat it. Some of your favorites are due in today.”
The president of Ultima was technically only a mayor. Her city ran on its own. Her approval rating hovered twenty to thirty points underwater. No one else wanted the job. She was the last authority, the city’s judge and counselor, its arbitrator and cheerleader. She was a dictator. Not to the level of her hero Baron, but she had ordered the deaths of more American citizens than he—or his father—ever did.
America was gone. The coasts were flooded. The cities flattened by automated wars. The highways led into seas and wastelands. The president of America was the mayor of Ultima because there was nothing left of the country.
The job paid well. Energy credits flowed freely to anyone who could maintain order. And in every election, except for the occasional unelectable fringe wacko, she ran unopposed.
The mayor-president had meetings in her office every single day. It was part courtroom drama and part talent show. Part reality competition and part public execution. The cameras were always on. It was amazing more people didn’t watch.
Her office was part therapist’s couch and part principal’s office. She listened to the gripes and groans, the mild problems and wild pontifications of any citizen who made an appointment. And it was endless. The waiting list stretched for months, though an untimely death could send you back to the back of the line.
Taryn tapped five more times on the desk and took three sips from her tea. It was the best and worst job in the city, and Madge—her assistant, her wife, her cabinet, her congress, her cook, her custodial staff, her rock—wouldn’t wish it on her worst enemy. Let alone the love of her fucking life.
Madge listened in on every meeting. After fifteen minutes or half an hour, the president would leave the room, leaving the citizen alone while she deliberated or decided or called in the dogs. She consulted her wife—the woman behind the woman, in front of the woman, next to the woman—who heard every word and weighed every decision. No president before had ever had that. They had sycophants and traitors and blamers. They never had a Madge.
Before the mad dictator could begin a string of executions from anger, frustration, or boredom, Madge would lift her with a quote, an aphorism, a witticism, or a dirty joke pulled from one of the countless books lining the walls. The president’s workspace was also the largest physical library left on Earth.
There were three things a citizen noticed upon entering the office: the books, the beautiful desk, and an old Yamaha motorcycle resting on a pedestal across from it. No one knew if it still ran. It had belonged to a previous occupant. A relic of speed. A symbol of escape.
Taryn tapped her fingernails three times and took another sip of tea. The office was a museum, a library, and a place of personal torment. The anticipation of disappointment was excruciating.
Hold on. Before we spiral into self-doubt, Madge was going to say something to start her day, and it would surely be the best part of it.
Madge lifted the teacup, sampled her wife’s tea, then replaced it, turning the handle so it faced Taryn’s right hand. She leaned in close.
“You know that thing where you can be funny and smart and cute all at the same time?” she whispered. The question was placed gently in a lover’s ear and with the warmth of jasmine tea on her breath, it was downright sexual.
“Yeah?” Taryn said, already feeling better.
“Well,” Madge smiled, “I have a front-row seat to that. I’m your biggest fan.” She kissed her boss on the cheek and stepped back into her professional role. “Buzz me when you’re ready for the first one, ma’am.”
Taryn tapped twice more on the desk. “Don’t ask me for a window seat and then sit in the aisle,” she called after her. With one final tap, it was time to lie through her teeth.
Before Madge had even sat down, the buzzer rang.
The president would see the first one.
The first over-pressing problem.
The first mentally taxed citizen.
The first constituent.
The first voter.
“Send in the next one.” ||
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